


East Coast Park

by afrai



Category: Ouran High School Host Club
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-11
Updated: 2008-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:37:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrai/pseuds/afrai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cycling in East Coast Park is the #1 leisure activity of the ordinary Singaporean!" said Tamaki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	East Coast Park

**Author's Note:**

> This is an Ouran story, only it's set in Singapore, and they're Singaporean. Probably they go to an international school. It is dedicated to all of you who like Ouran fic, especially those of you who like Ouran fic set in Singapore where the characters are Singaporean despite their names. So probably a vanishingly small number of y'all, but still.
> 
> If any Singaporeans wish to correct me on any detail, please feel free.

Haruhi had her mother's work ethic. It was oddly liberating to be taking the whole Saturday off. The small, careful part of Haruhi that kept track of dentist's appointments and how much milk they had left in the fridge thought, _I must do an hour's work before I go to bed tonight_, but most of her felt on holiday, excited, free. So when Tamaki dragged her to East Coast Park and announced that they were going to spend the day cycling, she didn't bother voicing even a token protest.

"I didn't know you liked cycling," she observed. They were renting two beat-up old bicycles from a sleepy-looking uncle. Haruhi let Tamaki pay. It wasn't much use being pai seh with Tamaki. He made a big production out of being charming, but the social niceties flew right over his swollen blond head.

Haruhi looked at the salt-and-pepper strands of hair straggling over the uncle's scalp; she looked out at the sky and the sea and the trees along the paths, the teenagers rollerblading joyfully by and the golden sunlight glinting off Tamaki's hair. Tamaki would have burst out into poetry or song, or, most likely, a terrifying amalgamation of both. Haruhi just thought her mother would have liked the scene.

"Cycling in East Coast Park is the #1 leisure activity of the ordinary Singaporean!" said Tamaki. "In imbibing the same sweet sea-scented air breathed by these commoners, your father will arrive at a deeper, ever more glorious understanding of your commoner heritage!"

"My grandfather was from Guangzhou," said Haruhi, puzzled. "Anyway, if this is a learning activity, where are the others?"

Tamaki drooped. His eyes turned dewy. He looked remarkably like Arai's golden retriever puppy when they'd caught her stealing pau off the kitchen counter.

"Don't be hurt, Haruhi," he said. "But Mother did not feel quite well today."

"Oh? What's wrong with him?"

"I believe his precise words were, 'If you think I'm getting up before noon on a Saturday, please come closer so I can decapitate you of that illusion'," said Tamaki. "You see, he was so ill he couldn't even pronounce 'disabuse' correctly!"

He struck a tragic pose of mourning. Then he brightened.

"But your demon brothers aren't coming either! They are indolent lay-a-bouts." With a flick of his hand, Tamaki dismissed all the trouble-making late-sleeping twins in the world.

"Just think," he said, "aren't we going to have fun?"

"Um," said Haruhi, who was distracted by the way Tamaki's bike wobbled along the path. If he fell down and hurt himself, she thought, she would ask him to wait in one of the shelters while she cycled around the park. They'd paid for two hours with the bikes -- might as well use them up. She saw Tamaki was waiting for a response.

"Sure," she said, and he was off again, now on some sort of rhapsody on the subject of bicycle shorts.

The funny thing was that it was true. She was enjoying herself. She liked cycling, the park was pretty, even Tamaki wasn't being as annoying as usual. And the weather was beautiful -- no longer as sunny as it had been earlier, but exquisitely cool, with the wind blowing off the sea ....

Oh. Haruhi braked, and looked out at the sea.

"Haruhi?" Tamaki looked back at her, but it would take him a while before he could manoeuvre his bike around so he could cycle back. His bike was already swaying dangerously.

"It's nothing," said Haruhi.

Ten minutes later, they were huddled under one of the shelters that dotted the beach as a storm raged around them. The wind howling off the sea was so strong it flicked grains of the improbably white sand off the ground and into the face with stinging effect. Haruhi pretended that was why she was hiding her face.

Lightning. Haruhi tensed in anticipation, but couldn't help jumping when the roll of thunder came. Tamaki shut up about the abrasions on his beautiful skin and said,

"Haruhi?"

Haruhi didn't speak. She was waiting for the next crack.

"Are you afraid of thunder?" said Tamaki.

When hideous crashing of the storm was over and the falling rain was a steady, comforting murmur that filled the world, Haruhi told Tamaki about her mother. He'd asked, and she didn't mind.

"She was a lawyer," said Haruhi. "I wish I remembered her better."

"Mothers are a beautiful thing," Tamaki intoned.

"Yes," Haruhi said absently.

The rain seemed to have a calming influence on Tamaki. Maybe it was knowing he'd get wet if he twirled too much and fell out of the shelter. He was wearing khaki Bermuda shorts and slippers, the blue plastic kind you got from pasar malam. It was extremely impractical gear for cycling.

"Don't your feet hurt?" said Haruhi.

"Am I so obvious?" said Tamaki. "It must be -- it must be the speaking quality of my blue eyes, their beautiful expression of silent suffering. The sight of so much quiet courage, of such a glowing belief in the triumph of art over pain. The sapphire pools burning with sacred fire! Oh, it must be a sin to feel so much ... "

"It's a pity I didn't bring any plasters," said Haruhi, frowning over the contents of her backpack. "You'd better put some over your blisters tomorrow, or you won't even be able to walk around school."

"I will float at the sight of your face," said Tamaki. He bounced up from the artistic swoon he had fallen into. "It will be as if my feet had wings!"

"Think you're SQ or what," said Haruhi, not unkindly.

"If I were, I would fly you to Paris!" said Tamaki. "Have you ever been to Paris, Haruhi? No? I'll take you there one day. Ah, Paris, city of lights, Romance itself made flesh and stone .... It is the city of lovers!

"And fathers and daughters as well, of course," he added as an afterthought.

How would he know? reflected Haruhi. He left Paris when he was six. Six-year-olds didn't know much about romance, did they?

Maybe he'd read about it in a book.

"I think the rain's stopped," she said.

It hadn't, but it was nothing more than a drizzle, and even that let up before they had even got to Tamaki's car. They slid into the car, shivering as the air conditioning hit them. Tamaki sighed.

"Your leg!" said Haruhi. The skin between his big toe and second toe was red, white flaps of skin chafed off by the plastic thong. He hadn't said a thing as they'd walked back across the park.

"They are a hardy-footed kind, your commoners," said Tamaki. He looked sad and noble and rather pleased with himself. "What manliness must burn in their hearts, to trudge to mines and market alike in such shoes!"

"We usually wear sneakers," said Haruhi crushingly. "You'd better wash your feet in Dettol when you get back."

"Oh," said Tamaki. His eyes started to glaze over. "Will -- will you wash them for me?"

Haruhi waved her hand before his face, but he didn't blink, lost in some weird world of his own. Not for the first time, she was glad she had no way of knowing what was going on in his head.

"No," she said. But he was a friend and he'd paid the bike rental, so:

"But I'll buy you the Dettol," she said.


End file.
